Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals
Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals

Author: Christopher M. Reali

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2022-07-19

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 0252053516

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A No Depression Most Memorable Music Book of 2022 The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the events and factors that gave the Muscle Shoals sound such a potent cultural power. Many artists trekked to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound in search of the sound of authentic southern Black music—and at times expressed shock at the mostly white studio musicians waiting to play it for them. Others hoped to draw on the hitmaking production process that defined the scene. Reali also chronicles the overlooked history of Muscle Shoals's impact on country music and describes the region's recent transformation into a tourism destination. Multifaceted and informed, Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals reveals the people, place, and events behind one of the most legendary recording scenes in American history.

Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
Muscle Shoals Sound Studio

Author: Carla Jean Whitley

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2019-01-28

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1625847173

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The chronicle of the legendary Alabama studio brings to life decades of rock, blues, and R&B history from The Rolling Stones to The Black Keys. An estimated four hundred gold records have been recorded in the Muscle Shoals area. Many of those are thanks to Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and the session musicians known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section—also dubbed “the Swampers.” Some of the greatest names in rock, R&B and blues laid tracks in the original, iconic concrete-block building, including Cher, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and scores of others. The National Register of Historic Places now recognizes that building, where Lynyrd Skynyrd recorded the original version of “Free Bird” and the Rolling Stones wrote “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses.” By combing through decades of articles and music reviews related to Muscle Shoals Sound, music writer Carla Jean Whitley reconstructs the fascinating history of how the Alabama studio created a sound that reverberates across generations.

The Man from Muscle Shoals
The Man from Muscle Shoals

Author: Rick Hall

Publisher: Heritage Builders

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9781941437520

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The story of legendary record producer Rick Hall and his life, from growing up in extreme poverty to building one of the country's most famous recording studios, Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Muscle Shoals Legacy of FAME, The
Muscle Shoals Legacy of FAME, The

Author: Blake Ells

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 144

ISBN-13: 1626197695

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FAME Publishing first opened in 1959 and produced hits for great musicians like Etta James, Clarence Carter and Aretha Franklin. ot long after, the city of Muscle Shoals became known as the "Hit Recording Capital of the World." FAME was the foundation that produced Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, the Nutthouse and Sundrop Sound at Single Lock Records - studios that gave a voice to artists like Drive-By Truckers, Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit and John Paul White. A new generation, including the Pollies and Doc Dailey & the Magnolia Devil, today carries the tradition of great music. Through extensive research, and enriched with interviews from those who lived it, local author Blake Ells chronicles the epic story that started with FAME.

Father Of The Blues
Father Of The Blues

Author: W. C. Handy

Publisher: Da Capo Press

Published: 1991-03-22

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780306804212

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W. C. Handy's blues—“Memphis Blues," "Beale Street Blues," "St. Louis Blues"—changed America's music forever. In Father of the Blues, Handy presents his own story: a vivid picture of American life now vanished. W. C. Handy (1873–1958) was a sensitive child who loved nature and music; but not until he had won a reputation did his father, a preacher of stern Calvinist faith, forgive him for following the "devilish" calling of black music and theater. Here Handy tells of this and other struggles: the lot of a black musician with entertainment groups in the turn-of-the-century South; his days in minstrel shows, and then in his own band; how he made his first 100 from "Memphis Blues"; how his orchestra came to grief with the First World War; his successful career in New York as publisher and song writer; his association with the literati of the Harlem Renaissance.Handy's remarkable tale—pervaded with his unique personality and humor—reveals not only the career of the man who brought the blues to the world's attention, but the whole scope of American music, from the days of the old popular songs of the South, through ragtime to the great era of jazz.

Where the Devil Don't Stay
Where the Devil Don't Stay

Author: Stephen Deusner

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2021-09-07

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1477323937

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In 1996, Patterson Hood recruited friends and fellow musicians in Athens, Georgia, to form his dream band: a group with no set lineup that specialized in rowdy rock and roll. The Drive-By Truckers, as they named themselves, grew into one of the best and most consequential rock bands of the twenty-first century, a great live act whose songs deliver the truth and nuance rarely bestowed on Southerners, so often reduced to stereotypes. Where the Devil Don’t Stay tells the band’s unlikely story not chronologically but geographically. Seeing the Truckers’ albums as roadmaps through a landscape that is half-real, half-imagined, their fellow Southerner Stephen Deusner travels to the places the band’s members have lived in and written about. Tracking the band from Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, to the author’s hometown in McNairy County, Tennessee, Deusner explores the Truckers’ complex relationship to the South and the issues of class, race, history, and religion that run through their music. Drawing on new interviews with past and present band members, including Jason Isbell, Where the Devil Don’t Stay is more than the story of a great American band; it’s a reflection on the power of music and how it can frame and shape a larger culture.

Lynyrd Skynyrd
Lynyrd Skynyrd

Author: Gene Odom

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2003-10-14

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0767910273

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The first complete, unvarnished history of Southern rock’s legendary and most popular band, from its members’ hardscrabble boyhoods in Jacksonville, Florida and their rise to worldwide fame to the tragic plane crash that killed the founder and the band’s rise again from the ashes. In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie Van Zant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band to play covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds and the country and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming their band after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee Senior High School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiring musicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties, and bars throughout the South. During the next decade Lynyrd Skynyrd grew into the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful of the rock bands to emerge from the South since the Allman Brothers. Their hits “Free Bird” and “Sweet Home Alabama” became classics. Then, at the height of its popularlity in 1977, the band was struck with tragedy --a plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant and two other band members. Lynyrd Skynyrd: Remembering the Free Birds of Southern Rock is an intimate chronicle of the band from its earliest days through the plane crash and its aftermath, to its rebirth and current status as an enduring cult favorite. From his behind-the-scenes perspective as Ronnie Van Zant’s lifelong friend and frequent member of the band’s entourage who was also aboard the plane on that fateful flight, Gene Odom reveals the unique synthesis of blues/country rock and songwriting talent, relentless drive, rebellious Southern swagger and down-to-earth sensibility that brought the band together and made it a defining and hugely popular Southern rock band -- as well as the destructive forces that tore it apart. Illustrated throughout with rare photos, Odom traces the band’s rise to fame and shares personal stories that bring to life the band’s journey. For the fans who have purchased a cumulative 35 million copies of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s albums and continue to pack concerts today, Lynyrd Skynyrd is a celebration of an immortal American band.

Sweet Soul Music
Sweet Soul Music

Author: Peter Guralnick

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2012-12-20

Total Pages: 655

ISBN-13: 031620675X

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A gripping narrative that captures the tumult and liberating energy of a nation in transition, Sweet Soul Music is an intimate portrait of the legendary performers--Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, James Brown, Solomon Burke, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Al Green among them--who merged gospel and rhythm and blues to create Southern soul music. Through rare interviews and with unique insight, Peter Guralnick tells the definitive story of the songs that inspired a generation and forever changed the sound of American music.

A Walk Through the Past
A Walk Through the Past

Author: William Lindsey McDonald

Publisher: Bluewater Publishing

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780971994560

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Descended from early pioneers of Florence and Lauderdale County, Alabama, the author has collected historical information about Muscle Shoals for more than a half-century. His research has involved personal interviews with Civil War veterans, former slaves, and descendants of both Native Americans and frontier families.